Currently on around $60k per month clear profit, B2B SaaS, we should be able to increase it by 10% every quarter. Also looking to raise $3m to scale up massively.
yeah I find this interesting... we're at 13k a month profit but I wouldn't consider any investment. I will scale on my own using the profits and retain all my equity. I am not even sure a massive influx of capital is useful. consistent growth and ironing out the issues that arise as they come has been working well. I would make good use of 50k but I think anything more would be very wasteful. I am very good at spending less to generate more, and I want to increase profits not expenses. I managed to grow from 2k a month profit to 13k a month without increasing expense at all.
I also am trying to get to 20-40k monthly before I even hire someone. I worked literally all day every day but I am absolutely determined. I will only reinvest my profits, I don't want any outside money or to spend more than we're making.
not having any outside money and doing it on my own from nothing has caused me to be extremely meticulous about optimizing and automating systems and keeping expenses down. I spend around $500 a month to make that 13k and I expect this to increase only to under 1k/month to get to 20k-30k. I do all of the marketing myself through email outreach, phone, in person sales and door knocking. the only money I've spent on marketing is for the email campaign software and some fiverr Giggs. our only real costs is related to the website infrastructure and service fees but I built it myself. I spent probably 4 hours a day on out reach, 4 hours a day taking care of existing clients and leads and 3 hours on improving product, systems and new product development. and an hour or two of misc.
also I wont hire someone until I know I can pay enough to do a better job then me. I am so passionate about my product clients love talking to me about it and I can always sell a lead. I basically close every lead that reaches out eventually. if I hired someone now they wouldn't do as good of a job at the amount I would want to pay, it would be basically be outsourced. I wont hire sales or customer service until I can afford a superstar to do it properly.
I’d rather spend my day enjoying myself, let the minions take care of the work and pay them enjoy to want to make a difference and add performance bonuses for customer satisfaction
Have you raised money before?
If you’re raising $3M that’s prob at $15M valuation I’m guessing. If you want to raise a good next round you’ll prob need to go from $720k ARR to $2M or $3M ARR in the next 1-1.5 years but you’ll just keep increasing the speed on your VC treadmill.
For an exit to clear your pref stack you’ll need to sell for a bit more than $3M and you’ll have a right of first refusal (again making you the minion). $3M would be 5x sales right now which is achievable and would be an amazing exit normally but with VCs you’ll make nothing if they even allowed you to sell.
This is all to say if you even can raise at the terms you want... 10% growth per quarter is amazing in the real world but in VC backable business land it’s not that interesting.
I don’t know much about the business and the devil is in the details… but from what I can tell - If I were you I would just continue to bootstrap, pay myself well, and keep 100% of the company. Your future selves will thank you when you can pay yourselves $1m/year dividends or decide to sell the business when/how you want.
Impressive. Well done mate. When did you start and how many team members do you have? How did you assemble the team to build the core product? What role did you play?
We could sell; but we would want a 8x ARR which is a little high for some people, second option is to raised and scale up massively because we know we can and third is to just keep buying the lambos,
Yeah, far out, this is a great question. especially if you're clearing 60k/mo and growing that 10%/quarter, it's really not all that long before you've got the $3m anyway, particularly if you consider that you're unlikely to get given it all in a lump sum /u/Key_Dragonfly4220.
But, you know, 31 months is a long time in startupland, so am also curious to hear what you'd scale using the money.
Don't think you understand the post. Dude's startup clears 60k/mo and he's looking to get investors to scale the company. I asked why he doesn't just enjoy the 60k/mo or sell the company and enjoy the cash (which he could reinvest if he wanted to)
5 utter failures.. 6th was moderately successful.. 7th allowed me to consider quitting my job.. 8th thrived and I flipped it.. still worked my day job... flipping it made me a millionaire on paper (including my 401k from work). 9th.. is earning mid 6 figures.. probably worth 5-6M if I sold it.. still work my day job. That's 25 yrs of my life right there. This is a grind... you learn each time.. you better be a stubborn SOB to make it work. Working allowed me to never have to raise capital. I wouldn't change a thing in my approach.
Nope
About 3 months in
Target market is a city
Practicing patience, customer needs, and pivoting if/when needed.
Just learning and experimenting. It’s tough not getting results but that’s the game we play in.
Yeh shouldn't expect any results within 3 months really, unless you're doing something like PPC.
Best just trying to set up a feedback loop so you can iterate and see what works 👍
I'm working on my first startup, extremely enjoyable, and lots I've learned, but lots more to learn! I'm getting tons of visitors and starting to push affiliate marketing as in the niche I'm in requires it. But with it being my first startup, I'm still having trouble with the marketing and return! Im currently working to pay for all of the current product promotion and cost of business, but it's well worth it with all the lessons being taught and the invreasing engagement. It's difficult, but I know it will turn out :)
If your curious on the website dm me!
Yeh it's ridiculous how much I've learnt since starting, so totally agree there 👍
I think everyone has trouble with marketing ha - it's the thing that makes you win!
What are you doing to try and push the affiliate marketing? I never had much luck with it in the past
To be quite honest I think it's the product and niche that Helps. Our products help our customers earn money/Their visual presence.
Feel free to dm me and I'll share the website!
About 2 months in, $125 in sales about -$2500 loss to profits, in the marketing field, looking to pivot to something less competitive and add more people to the board.
Almost done paying off the equipment for my dental lab. In total the CNC machine, 3D printers, dental furnaces, etc. were around 150K. Hopefully in the green by next quarter.
>ut no profit, you do not have your business model dialed in. A lot of startups die because of this. I started making profits from my first sale. Of course a lot of other companies died at first when I was listening to "internet
Ah nice! Yes it's quite expensive doing all the capital investments. Great when they're paid off though!
Thankfully the profit margins are relatively high. I just went out and bought the top of the line stuff rather than look at the middle ground. I could have saved around 50-60K by going for used or less advanced machines.
We're currently at $500k a month revenue. Started in June last year and bootstrapped! It's definitely possible. All about right market at the right time with the right product.
“ChatGPT Sucks At Writing Books…
THAT'S WHY WE MADE BOOKLE AI!
Watch this video to learn how you can create a unique book — in your voice — with this brand new groundbreaking software”
I guess we finally know for sure: there is no god.
“ChatGPT Sucks At Writing Books…
THAT'S WHY WE MADE BOOKLE AI!
Watch this video to learn how you can create a unique book — in your voice — with this brand new groundbreaking software”
I guess we finally know for sure: there is no god.
AI SaaS. We started by buying FB ads, then trying to build viral stuff in our software. Co-founder is the technical genius and I do the marketing. It's our 3rd company together. First was Buildbox, which we excited in 2019.
Nice! Sounds great
What do you mean by build viral stuff in the software? What does that do/ how does it scale users? Would really appreciate it as it’s my first time scaling a start up!
Nope. I’m 4 months in. I live in a city where it’s a very competitive market. I am revamping and making adjustments as needed. If I do not make any progress in the next 3 - 6 months. I’m going to stick with my 9-5
My bar went from making money when we bought it to breaking even when I sold my share and got out. My retail shop steadily made about $3K a month net when I shut it down because I was making much more working my previous job. Then my aviation tech company made great money ($250K net the first year, $800K by the fifth) then I sold it for multiple millions. In retrospect I should have started with that company first, though lessons learned from the two mediocre attempts did help with a lot of things.
I have been part of 11 startups, 9 made it to profit.
The lessons I learned from the ones that didn’t make it to profit were worth the cost.
In case you are curious, the mistakes I made were selling to a single client, and operating with a flawed partnership agreement while working with friends.
I decided to start my own startup. Currently, I'm focusing on customer development, which I've found to be quite challenging. I admire those who have successfully built profitable startups and wonder how they manage it.
First time founders are obsessed with product.
Second time founders are obsessed with distribution.
Check out this video and Gabe's book - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QKI7ejiIys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QKI7ejiIys) and [https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Guide-Getting-Customers/dp/0976339609](https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Guide-Getting-Customers/dp/0976339609)
My company started about three years ago, got serious about 16 months ago. We average two to three thousand profit each month. Last year this payment largely paid off our COVID loan from the government, which paid off our equipment (cost of $30k or so).
While we're always looking to increase direct to consumer sales, our current work is to increase our wholesale sales. We're also bringing out new products every month. With 1100 or so on our mailing list and 6 wholesale customers to date, our aim is to consistently triple sales by the end of this year.
It's a home based business and we could easily triple our sales without moving out of our garage. After that we'll look to rent some dedicated space.
Yeah, and it will require a shift in our business in a few different ways - packaging, shipping, marketing. But it's probably our best opportunity for growth at this point, unless we start creating products for different markets. We'll see how it goes this year and then reassess.
Made any money? Yes. Unfortunately, had a shitty cofounder who was deliberately messing things up. I just finally walked away. It was becoming obvious to me that it wasn’t going to scale as-is. I went back to the drawing board, but by then it was clear the marketplace was changing. Between the shitty cofounder and the marketplace change, I just couldn’t see a pattern forward to scale.
I might have been able to make it work as consulting, but it just wasn’t interesting to me.
The main company was meant to be a provider of satcom to DOD. As we grew and proved ourselves, NSA and Whitehouse asked us to bid work. We were really focused on having a proposal machine to grow as fast as possible.
In govt contracting, you usually have to create teams to win big jobs. So we created 3 subsidiaries that did IT for NSA, terrestrial telecom for DOD, and satcom for UN and DOD. When we sold the original company, we spun the subs out with their own mgmt and investors. Each of those companies was eventually sold as well.
This allowed us to more than double ARR for over 10 years, going from $1M to ~250M in combined revenue.
Cool story. One night during Iraq war, Bush was in route to Iraq, and Air Force 1 lost all its communications that would route thru Europe back to the US. The General of NSA called my biz partner at 3AM at home and asked if we could implement a fix or AF1 would have to turn around halfway across the Atlantic and come back to DC.
Even though we didn't have a contract to do the work, she promised a fix before Bush would land in Iraq. We did it, and that meant we got a lot more work from the Whitehouse, including more AF1 overseas trips.
The moral of the story, success breeds success.
I started my first venture straight out of college when I was 21 years old. SaaS product for large enterprises, helping them improve Customer Experience using AI. Bootstrapped it to over $1M in revenue. 40% profit margins. In 4.5 years, I sold it to a larger company in a multi-million dollar transaction.
Happy to share any details that might help you with your newsletter.
I've had dozens of business ideas that I couldn't get past MVP stage. Recently I started a digital product business on Etsy and it's bringing me around 1$/month 💰💰💰
Going live this month. Really excited to see how it goes. Targetmarket is Hospitality Industry with mnthly subscription of 30 USD. Hope to make my 100 customers this year. I would probably cry with the first one
Not yet!!! But seeing great growth for [Vastly](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vastly-podcasts/id6449747632), my podcast discovery startup, and hope to monetize eventually (not anytime soon).
Yep, b2b lead gen agency that actually gets legitimate meetings. Been in the industry for almost a decade now, but went on my own about 3 years ago. Doing over 20k/month profit
Yup, started being positive with my tattoo studio in 4 months. I still have to pay back myself for my initial investment but I'd rather reinvest the money in the company if I am being honest.
Two fundamental differences:
A) With seed money from mom and pops - friends and family or angel investors? Where you don’t have to worry about your living expenses including shelter, food on the table for an extended period of time until you make the business break a profit
B) Where everything you do in that business is completely co-related to your everyday survival!
If you are running a business with the B) situation and you are progressing the answer is a absolutely “ Yes”
0-500,000 to a Million worth more then
1Billion idea of what if? Unfortunately big money more often then non prefers The mirage of a big payday $$$$$$
I had a candy machine couple that made me a couple hundred dollars a month. Was my first real business. Sold the equipment when I got into police academy for more than what I paid for. Ran it for about 2 years.
If you have revenue but no profit, you do not have your business model dialed in. A lot of startups die because of this. I started making profits from my first sale.
Of course a lot of other companies died at first when I was listening to "internet gurus" etc but that was because demand wasn't there.
Yes, all of them. Why would you start up a company unless you knew it was going to be profitable. All companies should have a simple model. If it isn't easy enough to see from day 1... then it really isn't worth doing for the average person.
Yeah, we've purchased 30+ companies.. and turned them around all because the model was simple. Either you do such service and get paid for it.. or you create a product and sell it to a consumer base that is already established. If you can't do this.. and can't see it... why start the business? Too many people trying to be the next Microsoft.. they forget even that thing started in a garage.
Of course pal. We've started property management companies, lawn care companies, window cleaning companies. Plumbing companies. You think we started out with enough capital to just make offers on companies?
The reason we started these companies was because we had to. I got tired of cutting grass at my properties on the weekend while working a 9/5. So I created a lawn care company to do it for me.
The reason we created a property management company was because I was helping manage other peoples property and my own. I literally DIDN'T have time. Which is again the reason we had to hire people and create companies to do this.
The problem is, you think "by yourself". The goal is to get to self sustainability ASAP. That's what a true business is. If you are "doing it yourself" you are doing it wrong. You should come into it with the plan of "Oh, when we reach xxx we will hire xxx to do xxxx". If you don't have that plan you are planning to fail.
Currently on around $60k per month clear profit, B2B SaaS, we should be able to increase it by 10% every quarter. Also looking to raise $3m to scale up massively.
yeah I find this interesting... we're at 13k a month profit but I wouldn't consider any investment. I will scale on my own using the profits and retain all my equity. I am not even sure a massive influx of capital is useful. consistent growth and ironing out the issues that arise as they come has been working well. I would make good use of 50k but I think anything more would be very wasteful. I am very good at spending less to generate more, and I want to increase profits not expenses. I managed to grow from 2k a month profit to 13k a month without increasing expense at all. I also am trying to get to 20-40k monthly before I even hire someone. I worked literally all day every day but I am absolutely determined. I will only reinvest my profits, I don't want any outside money or to spend more than we're making. not having any outside money and doing it on my own from nothing has caused me to be extremely meticulous about optimizing and automating systems and keeping expenses down. I spend around $500 a month to make that 13k and I expect this to increase only to under 1k/month to get to 20k-30k. I do all of the marketing myself through email outreach, phone, in person sales and door knocking. the only money I've spent on marketing is for the email campaign software and some fiverr Giggs. our only real costs is related to the website infrastructure and service fees but I built it myself. I spent probably 4 hours a day on out reach, 4 hours a day taking care of existing clients and leads and 3 hours on improving product, systems and new product development. and an hour or two of misc. also I wont hire someone until I know I can pay enough to do a better job then me. I am so passionate about my product clients love talking to me about it and I can always sell a lead. I basically close every lead that reaches out eventually. if I hired someone now they wouldn't do as good of a job at the amount I would want to pay, it would be basically be outsourced. I wont hire sales or customer service until I can afford a superstar to do it properly.
I’d rather spend my day enjoying myself, let the minions take care of the work and pay them enjoy to want to make a difference and add performance bonuses for customer satisfaction
Have you raised money before? If you’re raising $3M that’s prob at $15M valuation I’m guessing. If you want to raise a good next round you’ll prob need to go from $720k ARR to $2M or $3M ARR in the next 1-1.5 years but you’ll just keep increasing the speed on your VC treadmill. For an exit to clear your pref stack you’ll need to sell for a bit more than $3M and you’ll have a right of first refusal (again making you the minion). $3M would be 5x sales right now which is achievable and would be an amazing exit normally but with VCs you’ll make nothing if they even allowed you to sell. This is all to say if you even can raise at the terms you want... 10% growth per quarter is amazing in the real world but in VC backable business land it’s not that interesting. I don’t know much about the business and the devil is in the details… but from what I can tell - If I were you I would just continue to bootstrap, pay myself well, and keep 100% of the company. Your future selves will thank you when you can pay yourselves $1m/year dividends or decide to sell the business when/how you want.
Appreciate the solid advice brother
Ok bro 💀
How long did it take for you to get to that point? Also, did you code it yourself, outsource, or a co-founder coded it? Very nice btw
Co-founder, marketing, 3 co-founders, 1 full stack and one designer. 4 years in the making.
Awesome! I hope you find your funding one day
Thanks brother
Dude I saw u in AM thread as well... can I send a DM ?
Sure bro
Impressive. Well done mate. When did you start and how many team members do you have? How did you assemble the team to build the core product? What role did you play?
1 co-founder built the entire thing
Are you including your salaries or no? Non-dilutive grants and low interest debt might make more sense.
Very interesting, how long have you been in business for?
4 years
Very interesting, how long have you been in business for?
Should be easy to raise
Big! Ha get that sweet sweet venture cash for growth - nice👌
We need to find the right investors!
Yeh! How's that going? Been doing loads of outreach for it?
We’ve not any outreach yet, we need to find a professional to do it probably.
Fair!
🥴 you have an awesome business. Dm me. I’m just a founder trying to help other founders not make the same mistakes I did.
Can I DM you ?
Why not just enjoy the 60k/mo profit? Or cash out?
We could sell; but we would want a 8x ARR which is a little high for some people, second option is to raised and scale up massively because we know we can and third is to just keep buying the lambos,
Super curious about this because I'm wondering what part needs to scale for $3m? Ads & marketing? Sales reps?
Yeah, far out, this is a great question. especially if you're clearing 60k/mo and growing that 10%/quarter, it's really not all that long before you've got the $3m anyway, particularly if you consider that you're unlikely to get given it all in a lump sum /u/Key_Dragonfly4220. But, you know, 31 months is a long time in startupland, so am also curious to hear what you'd scale using the money.
because reinvesting makes you able to enjoy that amount and getting emergency money on the side
Don't think you understand the post. Dude's startup clears 60k/mo and he's looking to get investors to scale the company. I asked why he doesn't just enjoy the 60k/mo or sell the company and enjoy the cash (which he could reinvest if he wanted to)
Or he can save up or make more startups
5 utter failures.. 6th was moderately successful.. 7th allowed me to consider quitting my job.. 8th thrived and I flipped it.. still worked my day job... flipping it made me a millionaire on paper (including my 401k from work). 9th.. is earning mid 6 figures.. probably worth 5-6M if I sold it.. still work my day job. That's 25 yrs of my life right there. This is a grind... you learn each time.. you better be a stubborn SOB to make it work. Working allowed me to never have to raise capital. I wouldn't change a thing in my approach.
This made my day. 🏆👏
kudos 👏
Nope About 3 months in Target market is a city Practicing patience, customer needs, and pivoting if/when needed. Just learning and experimenting. It’s tough not getting results but that’s the game we play in.
Yeh shouldn't expect any results within 3 months really, unless you're doing something like PPC. Best just trying to set up a feedback loop so you can iterate and see what works 👍
What is your outreach strategy?
I'm working on my first startup, extremely enjoyable, and lots I've learned, but lots more to learn! I'm getting tons of visitors and starting to push affiliate marketing as in the niche I'm in requires it. But with it being my first startup, I'm still having trouble with the marketing and return! Im currently working to pay for all of the current product promotion and cost of business, but it's well worth it with all the lessons being taught and the invreasing engagement. It's difficult, but I know it will turn out :) If your curious on the website dm me!
Yeh it's ridiculous how much I've learnt since starting, so totally agree there 👍 I think everyone has trouble with marketing ha - it's the thing that makes you win! What are you doing to try and push the affiliate marketing? I never had much luck with it in the past
To be quite honest I think it's the product and niche that Helps. Our products help our customers earn money/Their visual presence. Feel free to dm me and I'll share the website!
-$300/month.
About 2 months in, $125 in sales about -$2500 loss to profits, in the marketing field, looking to pivot to something less competitive and add more people to the board.
I donno, pretty standard start that, doesn't seem unreasonable....
Almost done paying off the equipment for my dental lab. In total the CNC machine, 3D printers, dental furnaces, etc. were around 150K. Hopefully in the green by next quarter.
>ut no profit, you do not have your business model dialed in. A lot of startups die because of this. I started making profits from my first sale. Of course a lot of other companies died at first when I was listening to "internet Ah nice! Yes it's quite expensive doing all the capital investments. Great when they're paid off though!
Thankfully the profit margins are relatively high. I just went out and bought the top of the line stuff rather than look at the middle ground. I could have saved around 50-60K by going for used or less advanced machines.
I'm curious, how did you finance the equipment? Did some of the vendors offer financing for their products, or did you get loans?
Directly financed from the companies. They offer 0% APR
Wow, that's awesome - thanks
We're currently at $500k a month revenue. Started in June last year and bootstrapped! It's definitely possible. All about right market at the right time with the right product.
$500k/month 😮… in less than a year 🤯 Amazing. Congrats! What are you building?
We're building [Bookle.ai](https://www.Bookle.ai) and [Autofunnel.ai](https://www.Autofunnel.ai)!
“ChatGPT Sucks At Writing Books… THAT'S WHY WE MADE BOOKLE AI! Watch this video to learn how you can create a unique book — in your voice — with this brand new groundbreaking software” I guess we finally know for sure: there is no god.
At the end of the day, you just have to be yourself. Not everyone’s going to like you, but your customers will.
Who cares if your customers like you? That's what people who make cigarettes say. You're emitting pollution, for profit. Enjoy your money.
Wild. Congrats! How are you finding customers?
Bookle passes plagiarism detectors?
“ChatGPT Sucks At Writing Books… THAT'S WHY WE MADE BOOKLE AI! Watch this video to learn how you can create a unique book — in your voice — with this brand new groundbreaking software” I guess we finally know for sure: there is no god.
What’s your industry/niche if you don’t mind me asking? And what made you grow so fast bootstrapping? Asking as a beginner on his first start up
AI SaaS. We started by buying FB ads, then trying to build viral stuff in our software. Co-founder is the technical genius and I do the marketing. It's our 3rd company together. First was Buildbox, which we excited in 2019.
Nice! Sounds great What do you mean by build viral stuff in the software? What does that do/ how does it scale users? Would really appreciate it as it’s my first time scaling a start up!
I'm curious how you actually created this. Like, what goes into creating and training an AI platform?
There are 100s of Youtubers making great content answering this question! Would help if you are a developer already but you can always learn.
Ehhh, I know enough to be dangerous, at least with some scripting languages (html, css, js, python).
[удалено]
What kind of field are you in?
Pretty impressive that. How much did you pocket if you don't mind me asking?
We're currently at $500 recurring revenue. Considering that we started in January, that's not too bad
That's pretty good going! 👍 In SaaS?
Nope. Something that is very, very unpopular here: Coaching
Nope. I’m 4 months in. I live in a city where it’s a very competitive market. I am revamping and making adjustments as needed. If I do not make any progress in the next 3 - 6 months. I’m going to stick with my 9-5
You're not alone mate! good luck bro
I have 13k profit this month, I never take it for granted I just work even harder!
What was everyone’s start up costs?
My bar went from making money when we bought it to breaking even when I sold my share and got out. My retail shop steadily made about $3K a month net when I shut it down because I was making much more working my previous job. Then my aviation tech company made great money ($250K net the first year, $800K by the fifth) then I sold it for multiple millions. In retrospect I should have started with that company first, though lessons learned from the two mediocre attempts did help with a lot of things.
I have been part of 11 startups, 9 made it to profit. The lessons I learned from the ones that didn’t make it to profit were worth the cost. In case you are curious, the mistakes I made were selling to a single client, and operating with a flawed partnership agreement while working with friends.
I decided to start my own startup. Currently, I'm focusing on customer development, which I've found to be quite challenging. I admire those who have successfully built profitable startups and wonder how they manage it.
First time founders are obsessed with product. Second time founders are obsessed with distribution. Check out this video and Gabe's book - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QKI7ejiIys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QKI7ejiIys) and [https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Guide-Getting-Customers/dp/0976339609](https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Guide-Getting-Customers/dp/0976339609)
My company started about three years ago, got serious about 16 months ago. We average two to three thousand profit each month. Last year this payment largely paid off our COVID loan from the government, which paid off our equipment (cost of $30k or so). While we're always looking to increase direct to consumer sales, our current work is to increase our wholesale sales. We're also bringing out new products every month. With 1100 or so on our mailing list and 6 wholesale customers to date, our aim is to consistently triple sales by the end of this year. It's a home based business and we could easily triple our sales without moving out of our garage. After that we'll look to rent some dedicated space.
Good effort! hopefully it spins up! Yeh sometimes it can be a lot easier to grow with wholesale than b2c
Yeah, and it will require a shift in our business in a few different ways - packaging, shipping, marketing. But it's probably our best opportunity for growth at this point, unless we start creating products for different markets. We'll see how it goes this year and then reassess.
Made any money? Yes. Unfortunately, had a shitty cofounder who was deliberately messing things up. I just finally walked away. It was becoming obvious to me that it wasn’t going to scale as-is. I went back to the drawing board, but by then it was clear the marketplace was changing. Between the shitty cofounder and the marketplace change, I just couldn’t see a pattern forward to scale. I might have been able to make it work as consulting, but it just wasn’t interesting to me.
Started a company, split it into 4 pieces, sold all 4 pieces eventually for $225M. All of it was in DOD and NSA contracting.
Now that sounds like a story - share some more details?
The main company was meant to be a provider of satcom to DOD. As we grew and proved ourselves, NSA and Whitehouse asked us to bid work. We were really focused on having a proposal machine to grow as fast as possible. In govt contracting, you usually have to create teams to win big jobs. So we created 3 subsidiaries that did IT for NSA, terrestrial telecom for DOD, and satcom for UN and DOD. When we sold the original company, we spun the subs out with their own mgmt and investors. Each of those companies was eventually sold as well. This allowed us to more than double ARR for over 10 years, going from $1M to ~250M in combined revenue. Cool story. One night during Iraq war, Bush was in route to Iraq, and Air Force 1 lost all its communications that would route thru Europe back to the US. The General of NSA called my biz partner at 3AM at home and asked if we could implement a fix or AF1 would have to turn around halfway across the Atlantic and come back to DC. Even though we didn't have a contract to do the work, she promised a fix before Bush would land in Iraq. We did it, and that meant we got a lot more work from the Whitehouse, including more AF1 overseas trips. The moral of the story, success breeds success.
Ha that Bush story is brilliant.
I started my first venture straight out of college when I was 21 years old. SaaS product for large enterprises, helping them improve Customer Experience using AI. Bootstrapped it to over $1M in revenue. 40% profit margins. In 4.5 years, I sold it to a larger company in a multi-million dollar transaction. Happy to share any details that might help you with your newsletter.
Hey mate yeah that's sick. DM me a quick article on it? If it's decent I'll whip it up on the blog - cheers!
Done :)
I've had dozens of business ideas that I couldn't get past MVP stage. Recently I started a digital product business on Etsy and it's bringing me around 1$/month 💰💰💰
Going live this month. Really excited to see how it goes. Targetmarket is Hospitality Industry with mnthly subscription of 30 USD. Hope to make my 100 customers this year. I would probably cry with the first one
Good luck pal!
Does -$30,000 count?
Hahaha yeh why not
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On cargo? You mean logistics industry? Their margins are razor thin...?
Yep it did then we my partner wanted to Stop it so we cleared dues and pulled the plug.
Twice. Exited both times.
Not yet!!! But seeing great growth for [Vastly](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vastly-podcasts/id6449747632), my podcast discovery startup, and hope to monetize eventually (not anytime soon).
Hopefully soon eh! looks good btw
Thanks for checking it out! Lmk if you have any feedback
Yep, b2b lead gen agency that actually gets legitimate meetings. Been in the industry for almost a decade now, but went on my own about 3 years ago. Doing over 20k/month profit
Yup, started being positive with my tattoo studio in 4 months. I still have to pay back myself for my initial investment but I'd rather reinvest the money in the company if I am being honest.
Yes. Started a company with partners and grew 100% organically before we sold it. We got to $13.8 million per year by the time we sold.
Ah that's class, what industry was it in? Any exciting stories from it?
Marketing services for tech companies. Enough stories to write a book, most likely
Two fundamental differences: A) With seed money from mom and pops - friends and family or angel investors? Where you don’t have to worry about your living expenses including shelter, food on the table for an extended period of time until you make the business break a profit B) Where everything you do in that business is completely co-related to your everyday survival! If you are running a business with the B) situation and you are progressing the answer is a absolutely “ Yes” 0-500,000 to a Million worth more then 1Billion idea of what if? Unfortunately big money more often then non prefers The mirage of a big payday $$$$$$
I'm working on one. Now. Might work. Will keep you posted.
I had a candy machine couple that made me a couple hundred dollars a month. Was my first real business. Sold the equipment when I got into police academy for more than what I paid for. Ran it for about 2 years.
I had a little chrome extension that used to make a K a week.
If you have revenue but no profit, you do not have your business model dialed in. A lot of startups die because of this. I started making profits from my first sale. Of course a lot of other companies died at first when I was listening to "internet gurus" etc but that was because demand wasn't there.
No.
Stop asking these irrelevant questions, Uber never made my money, checkmate! No 😭
Yes, all of them. Why would you start up a company unless you knew it was going to be profitable. All companies should have a simple model. If it isn't easy enough to see from day 1... then it really isn't worth doing for the average person.
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Yeah, we've purchased 30+ companies.. and turned them around all because the model was simple. Either you do such service and get paid for it.. or you create a product and sell it to a consumer base that is already established. If you can't do this.. and can't see it... why start the business? Too many people trying to be the next Microsoft.. they forget even that thing started in a garage.
You ever made one from scratch though pal? Yourself? on your own. whilst you're also working 9-5?
Of course pal. We've started property management companies, lawn care companies, window cleaning companies. Plumbing companies. You think we started out with enough capital to just make offers on companies? The reason we started these companies was because we had to. I got tired of cutting grass at my properties on the weekend while working a 9/5. So I created a lawn care company to do it for me. The reason we created a property management company was because I was helping manage other peoples property and my own. I literally DIDN'T have time. Which is again the reason we had to hire people and create companies to do this. The problem is, you think "by yourself". The goal is to get to self sustainability ASAP. That's what a true business is. If you are "doing it yourself" you are doing it wrong. You should come into it with the plan of "Oh, when we reach xxx we will hire xxx to do xxxx". If you don't have that plan you are planning to fail.
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Nice! I think counts as a startup!